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*** | iacovone's Behind The Curtain: Travels in Eastern Europe | ***

Hello, welcome. You may remember me from such careers as....oh what? It appears last year's career has been purged. Taken against it's will (allegedly). Anyway, I once had a good career that I documented here okay?

Where to begin...I've spent most of FM12 seeing to the big European nation small club to big club challenge. If you're at all interested in my Novese file (which went on to Champions League victory no less) you can find it here.

Now, onto more pressing matters. This is a career I hoped to get underway last year but never got round to. It had endured countless discussions with Crouchaldinho but sadly never came to fruition because of various commitments.

This time however, I'm taking the plunge!

The plan?

Based on Jonathan Wilson's book Behind the Curtain I will embark on an escapade around the Eastern European nations. Therefore I have loaded the following leagues:

To provide a source of crap south American's to the database I've also added:

Brazil | Argentina | Mexico

I may add some more leagues as I progress but the plan is to remain in eastern Europe. Hopefully I'll be able to create one of the great dynasties, much like Valeriy Lobanovsky's Dynamo Kiev. Because that's the beauty of eastern European football. As fractious as the nationhood is, there has always been enduring tales from truly unlikely places.

As ever, I will play this game as realistically as possible. So if a genuinely fantastic managerial offer comes in, I'll take it. I won't deliberately plunge my team into hideous debt just for the sake of signing the 'next whoever'. I will attempt to manage in all 12 nations along the way but will begin with the lowest reputation possible.

Founded in 1903 and based in Zagreb, HASK have long tradition in Croatian football. They were refounded in 1990 and later merged with NK Naftas in 2006. The NK HASK Stadion holds a mere 2000 people with the vast majority housed in the below stand.

We're predicted to come 12th out of 15 in a league that relegates four teams. This could be tricky.

After saying it wasn't my dream job, I proceeded to offer them a 'low' bonus for the league and cup. We've got to stay reasonably financially prudent after all!

Then, they alerted me to the fact we didn't have a coach with fitness > 1. So I'm addressing that now. But suffice to say, with a few days before the league season kicks off, we're already in a bit of bother!

Anyway, the players I believe will be good enough to keep us in the division:

I don't expect much, just a bit of fight! Hamzagic should be the best of the lot whilst Nevistic is a very useful keeper for this level (particularly being 18 too). Tolic is the club captain and Selak looks good enough to grab some goals. Let's see.

looking forward to seeing how you get on with this career mate, even though you have turned your back on Big Euro Nation... good luck with it - hopefully it's more successful than your last career save....

A quick update: we're doing ok. Sitting mid-table after 7 games. But I have a major problem! My captain Tolic just refuses to listen to me! Every team talk I give he switches off and loses morale. It's 'abysmal' every game. Not good!

This is the type of situation where I look for the "kick the guy in the goolies" option. If you find it, please let me know, it must be there somewhere.
Odds are it wouldn't help his morale, but it might help yours.

So it's been a pretty good start to my time at HASK. The main man has been Kresimir Trepsic who joined us on loan from Zagreb. He has 5 in 5 so far. I was particularly disappointed with our heavy 4-0 loss to 10 man Junar but the win at Medimurje more than made up for it. I'm getting stuck into the other managers in the league who keep touting us for relegation too. Love a bit of verbal sparring with these two-bob nobodies! Unlike me of course...

It's a fairly short season - just the 28 games so we're making good progress. If we carry on in this vein we should stay up. Not bad for my first venture!

Going well so far. Really tempted to join you on this adventure in my own save.

Ha! I forgot how much I missed a career save. Having the option to just up sticks and leave if I get bored is great. Though I'm also a little regretful that I only did eastern Europe (despite the name of the thread and idea behind it!). May well open up a ton of new leagues at the end of the season

So with just seven games remaining we're just about on course to survive the dreaded relegation in my first year at HASK. As you can see, results up to the Winter break were pretty awful and that led to my decision to switch to formations.

We're now playing with a much more open 3-5-2 set-up which has been much more productive. Aside from the thrashing Solin handed us, we've competed well in 2012, snatching three victories and a couple of draws to keep our heads above water.

We should be okay in the run-in though I am acutely aware that we've not won in three games now. If I can address that mini-slump, we'll be charging our glasses to a wonderful campaign (ish).

Off the pitch has been eventful. Making Igor Tolic my captain is just about the worst decision I've made on FM. He's now been relegated to the bench even despite me adding an additional CB in our formation. He switches off in teamtalks, has scored an own goal and is constantly injured. He really hates me. But in spite of all that, I've kept him as far from disrupting the team as possible. I may have to rethink that captaincy choice in the summer.

I'll hopefully be reporting on a survival story come the next update. Stay tuned!

Nice one. You look safe for the season.
Do you look like being in a position to do so some off-season signings in preparation for the climb up the table next season?

Unsure really. Finances are a mess at -£300k but I've already tied up a deal for a really promising 16-year-old AMC. Should know more in the summer where I can cut a lot of the deadwood from the squad. I'll go from there. There should be more than 1 place available for promotion next year but also 5 relegated Division 1 teams in the league. It won't be easy!

OUCH. I only call these meetings when we are on a bad run in an attempt to turn it around, only bad reaction I had was when my daughter had hit the space bar, so I went back to see if I could finish the meeting and the answer was "OH Great another Meeting"

Hopefully that meeting doesn't hurt too much as you head down the stretch. Good Luck.

We escaped. But only just! A dreadful run of results, sparked by my underwhelming (to say the least) team meeting had me thinking we were headed for relegation. Fortunately those below us were just that bit worse!

So it's a mildly successful first year in management for me. I see no reason to leave and look forward to dumping the deadwood and snapping up some flotillas of footballing prowess in the summer. One slight problem - we're £450k in debt and the board have just done this:

That was one bad team meeting. Bad morale makes things nigh on impossile in this game.
Still, you got through and the new seaosn is always full new (and I find usually false) hope. The extra expense on the stadium hurts, that's rough luck just when you are loking to turn over some players and hunt for more talent.
Another 3300 capacity when you start with just 2000 seems like overkill, even if it is "to comply with league requirements".

So, I know everyone's been wondering about the league structure for this season...

Four went down last season and just one side got promoted.

Well, this year, one gets promoted (still) and SEVEN teams get relegated from Div 2 .

Three come down from Div 1. So next year there will be a top division with just 10 teams - it's bizarre! And also terrible news for us - how can you have 7 teams relegated from a 16 team division?! We're in major trouble

My board also committed stadium lunacy recently. They built a brand new 37,000-seater stadium in 2015 for 80,000,000... only to decide to build another new one for 2018 before we'd played our first match at the new venue

I can only envisage it's some sort of temporary athletics-related arrangement or something

My board also committed stadium lunacy recently. They built a brand new 37,000-seater stadium in 2015 for 80,000,000... only to decide to build another new one for 2018 before we'd played our first match at the new venue

I can only envisage it's some sort of temporary athletics-related arrangement or something

What!? That's insane haha!

Originally Posted by SRL88

Going to enjoy reading this. Good luck mate.

Congratulations on survival at least.

Thanks, I'm sure this next season will get markedly more interesting...

I have some new signings to introduce. With SEVEN (that's right, I just can't get over how ridiculous this league is!) teams going down this year, the odds are massively stacked against us. Predicted to come 15th of 16 teams, I really have my work cut out for me...

Erm, well that was swift. There's clearly no messing about in Croatia - a dreadful start to the season saw me relieved of my duties. I suppose when you look at the results and league position you can understand why. Still, I thought I'd be given slightly longer than that to see if we were capable of sticking around in the division!

Yes, I've included friendlies! It's to pad out my CV alright? I should add - this season I decided to turn into an utter b*stard and criticised any manager who dared question HASK or my management. I made NO friends in Croatia. I wonder if that impacted the board's decision to sack me?

So, the first step into Eastern Europe ends fairly badly. Where will I end up next? You shall see...

Five games in, that was harsh. Sure, 7 get the drop so perhaps there was pressure to move because of that. But you were predicted to finish 15th, what did they expect.
Its the early setbacks and eventual sucess that make an iacovone career what they are, good reading and often better than playing the game myself.

Now the problem (aside from being utter crap) is that their season has just finished (in November) and doesn't restart until April. So I'll be sitting around staring blankly at a map of Belarus for 6 months...

Also, another problem - they came 14th out of 16, just escaping relegation to the third tier...

I'll leave it to you to give me some advice - I'm going for a run to ponder where it all went wrong at HASK

Five games in, that was harsh. Sure, 7 get the drop so perhaps there was pressure to move because of that. But you were predicted to finish 15th, what did they expect.
Its the early setbacks and eventual sucess that make an iacovone career what they are, good reading and often better than playing the game myself.

You've got time to find players to build a squad better than 14th. If there a few you can axe without paying out their contracts and the wage budget isn't too far off the other lower clubs in the league, take it. I'd be less inclined to take it if I had to sell complete duds in order to free up some wage budget, quite often you just can't get rid of them without paying them out.
Are there any other jobs under pressure in the lower leagues that you might be a shot at?

If I were you I'd wait. Find yourself a job with a useless crap in a more exciting league such as CZ, SK, PL, HR, RS, RO. That break is too long and you'll get bored as hell and there aren't enough good teams in Belarus to make the league exciting to play imo.

My next step in this adventure finds me posting up in the Belarusian First League (amusingly, the 2nd tier). Mogilev have just been relegated from the Highest League after initially surviving their first campaign. So who to turn to in times of trouble? Well Alexander Romantsev of course - that Lithuanian manager despised in Croatia . That's me by the way...

So who are we?

Well we hail from Mogilev (as you might suspect), which is located in the east of Belarus. The city has a reasonably large smattering of Belarusian's - 360,918 by 2011's estimate - making it the 3rd largest city in Belarus.

Founded in 1267, Mogilev has been through the mill in it's time. Claimed by Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Germany, the Soviets and now Belarus, it is likely to be an ethnically diverse place. It is also twinned with 12 cities from around Europe - all of which are alien to me.

What about the club?

Well, we play at the Spartak Stadion, which holds a decent 7,990 people in an all-seater. We have well established youth recruitment and excellent junior coaching - a brilliant surprise for me on arrival. I'm pleased with that.

We hate Dinamo Minsk and Slavia Mozyr - neither of which are in our division. They're in the Highest Division - one that we've won once in our history - in 1998.

Speaking of - this is a 16 team league. Two go up, two go down. And we're predicted to come 1st .

Best of luck iacovone - I have always had an interest in the Belarusian leagues, just a shame that whenever I manage there I fail miserably The strict foreigner rules means having those good facilities to produce good youngsters will be hepful. Hope you manage to gain promotin at your first attempt.

Best of luck iacovone - I have always had an interest in the Belarusian leagues, just a shame that whenever I manage there I fail miserably The strict foreigner rules means having those good facilities to produce good youngsters will be hepful. Hope you manage to gain promotin at your first attempt.

Thanks mate. Yeah, I've got 1 foreign player in the squad. He was fine in the top flight where those restrictions don't exist but I'll have to get rid of him whilst in the 2nd tier. Shame. We look to have a decent squad.

Ah, it seems I've got a few mutinous Belarusian's in my camp. The three best players - all represented by the same agent are transfer listed by request. With us a cool half a million in debt, I'll be offloading the three sadly. I'm particularly annoyed at losing Denis Obrazov our left-back as he's rated as a 5 star ability man.

Denis Obrazov (D/WBL) - the 5 star man. Will be great but not in a vital key position.Andrey Orochko (AMRLC/ST) - signed on loan for the campaign, he'll give us plenty of options across the three AM positions behind the striker.Fyodor Tchernykh (AMLR/ST) - annoying surname but one of the best players in the squad. May have to be used up front. Aliaksandr Tarlikovskiy (D/WBR/DM/MC) - a versatile defensive minded player with decent physical and mental attributes. Useful.Kirill Demenkovets (DM/MC) - another loanee, but brought in mainly to give us some depth in CM. But may have to start we're so short in quality at CM. At least he can run about.

Yep, that's my best. Doesn't look as though they are promotion contending standard but we'll see what happens...

Deary me, this is beginning to resemble my career on FM11! We were tipped to come first and although I expressed my trepidition, I didn't expect it to be as bad as this. We lost 5 out of 5, including 5-1 to Belcard - the other side I had a job offer from. There was no way I was going to stay after that. The job hunt starts again.

Even our friendlies were poor this time. I really need to find a tactic that's going to work in the lower reaches of Eastern Europe, and a decent club to build up. This is going dreadfully

Well at least I'm getting a good tour of Eastern Europe right? After the Belarusian disaster, I really couldn't show my face there again. Fortunately little-known Romanian 2nd Division side CF Braila decided I was the right man to save them relegation in the upcoming 2013/14 season. Ha.

So who are we?

Founded in 1922, Braila are one of the oldest clubs in Romania. The club enjoyed the best period of success in the early 90s, finishing 6th in the top flight and reaching the Romanian Cup final (and losing). Since then, they've flitted between the 2nd and 3rd tier.

Braila is the 11th most populous city in Romania (thanks Wiki) just shy of 170,000 people. It is also in the east of the country. It's also twinned with Calais - I guess because it's a port town on the Danube.

What about the club?

Alarmingly we're £1m in debt as I take over - doesn't bode well.

The Municipal stadium holds 18,000 people (8,000 seats) which is rather impressive. Our facilities are basic across the board so nothing to see there.

I'm also back to the tricky league structure where 5 go down and 2 go up. 14 teams in the division.

Unlucky iacovone, but Belarusia really is tough, I have tried a small to big club save there twice and got relegated twice, badly! Just not enough good players around. Hope you finally get your lucky break in Romania.

Ah, it seems I've got a few mutinous Belarusian's in my camp. The three best players - all represented by the same agent are transfer listed by request. With us a cool half a million in debt, I'll be offloading the three sadly. I'm particularly annoyed at losing Denis Obrazov our left-back as he's rated as a 5 star ability man.

Should have sent them to the gulag. I'm sure Lukashenko would have some places available.

I had a trip to Belarus in FM 12 and did about as well as you did. Friendlies went well, then the league started and we were getting humped 5- and 6-0 every time.